As we have already announced, we are pleased to have SkillsGen on-site with us at our Wavertree offices.  Skills-Gen is a Microsoft Gold partner and one of the leading training companies in the North-West.  Gardner has an agreed bespoke and also an off-the-shelf training programme for all users. We cater for users who wish to do anything from just familiarising themselves with the new Microsoft technologies up to obtaining professional certified qualifications.  We can jointly agree work “coaching” and enterprise-wide certification.

Following our latest series of Microsoft events covering Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Server 2008 R2 we are pleased to announce that we can now offer training on these subjects.

For a detailed response to your own specific requirements, just call our technical sales team on 0151 220 5552 or email us at info@gardsys.co.uk.

To this end a number of our clients had met with us to discuss how we could help them build a continuity model, that in the event that they could not access their normal business premises then how could we help them to implement a solution to allow their businesses to continue

We have just completed a pilot solution with one of those clients to prove just how we can use their technology investment to create such a continuity solution.

As this is a pilot solution and of a sensitive nature, we are not able to share the client’s details with you, however we can share the technology approach and how we have used NetApp storage and virtualisation to give a continuity solution.

The current client setup includes a number of physical servers, providing a number of services, such as email and database facilities, internal storage is delivered using NetApp’s unified storage platform, presenting both user data via NAS and storage to the server infrastructure via a SAN.

The aim was to provide two key components;

· To provide a remote “backup” of their live data both application and user data, which would be no more than 4 hours out of date from the production environment.

· To allow in the event of their main business headquarters been inaccessible to have key business staff setup at Gardner Systems Offices and access a replicated version of their current business environment, including applications and data.

To provide this we were going to take advantage primarily of the NetApp storage they had invested in, using NetApp’s SnapMirror technology, we would be able to replicate their business data to a secondary NetApp storage solution in a secure location, using a simple encrypted connection across the Internet. Utilising NetApp’s snapshot technology and SnapManager application suite, we would be able to take consistent instantaneous backups and replicate them to the secondary storage, without affecting production data.

This alone provided and met the first requirement which was to provide a live disk based “off site” backup of the production data.

The Second challenge was to replicate the production server environment allowing users to access their data and business applications from a secondary location, should their production office no longer be available.

Again we have utilised technology to make this straightforward by taking advantage of Microsoft Hyper-V server, we were able to build a virtualised replica of the production servers, allowing users to turn up with their laptops, or virtualised desktops if required to allow them to Logon to the system they would normally see in the office.

This allows us to store all of the users physical devices, on a single virtual server, which then only need bringing online for testing, or in the event of an actual continuity incident, reducing the client costs as there is no need to charge them for the maintenance of physical machines.

We have provided them with a per Gb/Pre month cost model for hosting a copy of their data, again removing the investment they would have to make in both owning, hosting and operating their own secondary storage solution.

We are now looking to formalise the procedure and service level agreements with this customer, in what is a very exciting new area for us and providing an invaluable service to Merseyside’s business community.

To find out more about how this pilot has worked and the technology used to do it, contact pauls@gardnersystems.co.uk

Our Network Manager Alan Eves said “ we have been so impressed with the quality of the products, but more importantly with the efficiency is running costs and importantly business practices that these new products are bringing to us”

Alan has been involved in transforming a number of the day to day operations at Gardner by heading up a SharePoint roll out across the business, “this has revolutionised the way Gardner interact with not only each other, but also our customers and event attendees”. As part of the new technology migration Gardner are looking to enhance their event management and customer interation further by deploying Microsoft CRM.

Other technology products currently rolling out across the business include;

· Windows 7 on all desks

· Server virtualisation programme, using Microsoft Hyper-V and managed with the System Centre Toolset (Virtual Machine Manger, operations manager and config manager)

· Exchange 2010

· Online Services (integrating on premise solutions with online Exchange, OCS and Live Meeting)

“these technologies are transforming the way we are operating out business, as an example the deployment of Hyper-V R2 is going to greatly reduce the physical server count, reducing both out power and cooling requirements” Alan Added.

Alongside the Microsoft technology, Gardner are also taking advantage of their NetApp storage platform as well, to allow for a hugely efficient delivery mechanism for their new virtualised infrastructure . “The NetApp storage technology is very important in our virtualisation programme, we believe it bar far the most efficient storage technology on the market, with its deduplication and cloning technology, allowing both massive space savings as well as incredibly efficient machine creation, letting us create new Windows servers in a matter of a couple of minutes. Both technologies have positively impacted what we are doing, allowing us to be much more cost and time efficient” Alan Added.

If you want to see more about what Gardner’s are doing, contact Alan to arrange a demo alane@gardnersystems.co.uk

New Features

In an attempt to unify all MS product user interfaces the well known icon based ribbon toolbar is being developed for the SP2010 web interface. From here users can perform common SP tasks such as checked in and out documents, emailing on links to locations etc etc.

Site customisation is going to be a big part of SP2010, for those of you not keen on the icon ribbon toolbar then you can simply turn it off or make your own. Customising the look and feel of the web interface is also easier than the current SharePoint designer setup now. The site can be edited by the owner as if the page was a typical MS Office document.

For those of you already using some of the more advanced features of SharePoint no doubt you would have heard of the “Business Data Catalogue”. In SP2010 this is renamed to “Business Connectivity Services” and gives users the ability to manipulate data in business databases. The end result of this is that users have the ability to read, write, update and delete records in databases (such as SQL) from MS Office documents and InfoPath forms.

-this sounds a lot easier than using the Web Services which are available now.

Administration

Management of SharePoint is going to get easier with a whole host of new admin tools to monitor server performance, farm status, fix common problems and view usage stats.

MS have announced also that Firefox 3.x, Safari and IE (all versions over 6.0) will be supported.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218500775&subSection=News

Specs

In an attempt to aid budgeting and planning the preliminary server specs have already been released:

64 bit architecture only (there is no 32-bit version)

MS Windows Server 2008 or MS Windows Server 2008 R2

SQL Server 2005 / 2008 (64-bit only)

What if I Want to Upgrade?

1. Start by ensuring new hardware is 64-bit.  Deploying 64-bit is our current best practice recommendation for SharePoint 2007.
2. Deploy Service Pack 2 and take a good look at the SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Checker that’s shipped as part of the update.  The Upgrade Checker will scan your SharePoint Server 2007 deployment for many issues that could affect a future upgrade to SharePoint 2010.
3. Get to know Windows Server 2008 with SharePoint 2007, this post is a great starting point.
4. Consider your desktop browser strategy if you have large population of Internet Explorer 6 users.
5. Continue to follow the Best Practices guidance for SharePoint Server 2007.
6. Keep an eye on this blog for updates and more details in the coming months.

Below are a few common Q&A’s (which we’ll add to as required)

Advantages of 64-bit hardware and software (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Migrate an existing server farm to a 64-bit environment (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

We’ll keep you posted on more information as it is announced